Phillips: The WNBA’s future could change forever after next season

Once the 2019 WNBA season comes to an end, we’re going to find out a lot about the future of the league.

Because at that moment, the WNBA player’s association will have the chance to opt out of their current collective bargaining agreement and negotiate a new one that can address one of their biggest issues: player salaries.

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A recent report by The Dallas Morning News, shined a light on a conversation that Dallas Wings teammates Skylar Diggins-Smith and Liz Cambage had that led to Cambage revealing just how bad the gender wage gap is within American professional basketball.

"Today I learnt NBA refs make more than a WNBA player and the 12th man on a NBA makes more than a WHOLE WNBA team," Cambage tweeted. "Not sure if I want a sex change or a career change right now.

"It's [quite] frustrating going to bed most nights knowing that if I was born with a penis I would be entitled to so much more in life. But ... I love being a woman I will never stop fighting for my sisters."

For players who have been in the WNBA for six years, their maximum salary is only $115,000 compared to the average salary that’s estimated to be around $79,000. Entry-level NBA referees start out at $150,000.

Ouch.

"I don't know how much traction we're really getting with these conversations," Diggins-Smith told The Dallas Morning News. "They may be coming up and causing conversations but what's actually happening [to change], I don't know the numbers."

A 2017 report from Forbes gave a scathing example of how a WNBA superstar like Minnesota Lynx center Sylvia Fowles’ salary compares to that of an aging NBA veteran like Leandro Barbosa.

“This season, Sylvia Fowles led the WNBA in field goal percentage, finished second in rebounding per game, tied for second in blocks per game and ranked fifth in points per game. Her team — the Minnesota Lynx — also finished with the best record in the WNBA. For all this, Fowles was named league MVP.

“According to Summit Hoops, Fowles was paid $109,000 for all she did in 2017. Meanwhile, Leandro Barbosa is scheduled to earn $500,000 from the Phoenix Suns in 2017-18. This past July, though, Barbosa was waived by the team. So Barbosa will be paid nearly five times what the WNBA MVP earned, and Barbosa won't even play for the Suns.”

A big chunk of the pay differential has to do with how much money each league generates. However, WNBA players aren’t asking for similar salaries to the NBA because they know their league doesn’t bring in anywhere near the dollars the NBA does. According to Forbes, NBA teams generated $5.9 billion in revenue in 2015-16. And when you compare that to the estimated $51.5 million the WNBA as a whole brought in last season, there is no comparison.

However, when Forbes broke down the numbers, the NBA pays their players almost 50% of the league’s revenue compared to less than 25% of what women in the WNBA get from their league.

Here’s where the problem lies.

Forbes goes on to even break down a calculation that proves just how much some of the league’s most well-known players are underpaid. Players like Candace Parker, Nneka Ogwumike, Maya Moore, and others are making anywhere from $600,000 to almost $882,000 less than they should.

The wage gap is a big reason why many WNBA players work year-round and make the bulk of their money playing overseas. A 2014 report from Business Insider calculated that Brittney Griner once made 12 times her salary playing in China.

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Phoenix Mercury star Diana Taurasi even sat out the entire 2015 WNBA season after her Russian club team paid her not to play. That year Taurasi earned $1.5 million playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg, which was 15 times what her WNBA salary would have been.

"The year-round nature of women's basketball takes its toll and the financial opportunity with my team in Russia would have been irresponsible to turn down," Taurasi wrote in an open letter to Mercury fans. "They offered to pay me to rest and I've decided to take them up on it. I want to be able to take care of myself and my family when I am done playing."

Starting last season, the maximum salaries in the WNBA will only go up by $8,000 until 2021, when the current collective bargaining agreement expires.

“While I believe it is too early now to identify the specific priorities in any upcoming negotiations, I will share that the WNBPA Executive Committee, under the leadership of Nneka Ogwumike (President) and Layshia Clarendon (First Vice President), has advised players of the need to read and understand the CBA and to otherwise get up to speed on potential areas of interest and concern,” wrote Terri Jackson, WNBPA Director of Operations, in a statement to the New York Daily News.

“I am pleased to report that this is an engaged group of players and they have been reading the CBA since the 2017 off season. As reasonable minds would agree, it is a document that needs to catch up with the times."

Next year the players will have a chance to have their voices heard, as they will surely ask for a bigger piece of the pie.

If the WNBA is smart, they will oblige.

Because if they don’t, I believe that the best women’s professional basketball league on the planet will start to see a larger group of players make a “business decision” to sit out a season.